Colonial Candied Orange Peels

  A simple and yummy addition to bring authenticity and color to your Thanksgiving feast is Candied Orange Peels with Cranberries. Our Founding Mothers depended on citrus to protect their families against disease and their ingenuity at preserving food, combined with the skill of the Native Americans in cultivation ensured survival in the birth of our great Nation. Sugar was …

A HEART MOST WORTHY by, Siri Mitchell

One of my favorite parts of  a Siri Mitchell novel is the cover! Seriously, could you walk past this book at the store and not pick it up? And of course, once you’ve picked it up and glanced at the back cover blurb, you are going to buy it! The intricacy and detail of the dress are what you find …

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR SARAH SUNDIN

I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Sundin at the Mount Hermon Writer’s Conference last April. Her warmth and genuine interest in others spills over in her bubbly personality and when she talks about research her energy is infectious! A graduate of UCLA and UC San Francisco, she’s a mom of three and works as an on-call hospital pharmacist. She and her …

To Dad . . . Love, Me

On Father’s Day I like to write notes to my dad and remind him of the warm memories of growing up that helped shape me into the person I am today. Most all of those memories are of the fun times we shared, but there are a few that were painful. Sometimes what hurts the most has the most relevance …

Christine Lindsay’s SHADOWED IN SILK

From the moment I opened the book I felt in the midst of the mysterious and exotic world of India. Ms. Lindsay’s rich descriptions will dazzle your senses. When Abby Fraser arrives by ship with her young son, Cam, you already feel her anticipation of the difficulties that await her. The contrasts that confront her on the  dock, the splendor of colors washed in bright, hot …

Rules, rules, rules! A season for all things.

Most writers today, writers of fiction, will find there are myriad rules to follow in order to write a really good book of fiction. And for the unpublished writer hoping to catch the eye of an editor, the rules had better be followed. I know there was a time when that wasn’t true for the most part. Show don’t tell was not necessarily the …

THE SPEECHMAKER AND THE SPEECHMASTER

Dad’s physical recovery from his stroke was amazing and that is mostly due to his incredible health and physical condition before his heart surgery. Taking care of a farm and horses, chopping wood and building fences, cleaning his home and preparing his meals kept him in shape. He quit smoking his cigars and pipes years ago and was careful about his …